Category: Quotes

Ralston on literature and anonymity

The greatest of the world’s literature is strangely anonymous. We learn from their writing nothing of the lives of Homer or Shakespeare. Even Dante is only an apparent exception to this rule. The actual circumstance, the personal detail of his life, is present in the Divine Comedy in solution. It can be precipitated only by […]

Peter Wood: “Ashes”

Boston University’s campus along the Charles River was mutilated over the years by various road-building projects. It lost its waterfront to Storrow Drive in 1950, and then got sliced on the other side by the Massachusetts Turnpike in 1965. The construction left some odd remnants of land, including a triangular path of hillside next to […]

CC106: The monkeys are at it again

Do you see them? Those monkeys are banging away at their typewriters, trying to type out the complete works of Shakespeare. Every time there’s a problem involving randomness, the monkeys get called into action. But these are not your average monkeys. No, these are gedanken monkeys. They can madly type 24 hours a day, seven […]

‘A Faustian bargain’: on the value of the humanities

Perhaps my own background will interest you. I started out as a classics major. I’m now Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry. Of all the courses I took in college and graduate school, the ones that have benefited me the most in my career as a scientist are the courses in classics, art history, sociology, and […]